


Metanoia

by imogenbynight



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean's POV, Demon Cure, Demon!Dean, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trueform Castiel, Unreliable Narrator, dubcon undertones (from abaddon to dean), season 10, sexually suggestive abaddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2488421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Metanoia: the journey of changing one’s mind, heart, or self.</p><p>Or; the one in which the demon cure Sam and Castiel are carrying out on Dean results in fever dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metanoia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twistedsardonic](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=twistedsardonic).



The bunker’s basement smells like damp and bitter almonds, and though the blood doesn’t pass his lips Dean can taste it on his tongue. At the moment the first needle sinks through his skin, presses into his neck and releases, he feels pain like a bee sting and forgets everything. The anger gives way to agony and he doesn’t think.

Just feels it. Sharp.

Feels it, puncturing the skin of his throat without resistance.

Feels it, hot poison burrowing through his flesh and into his veins. But it doesn’t just follow the veins.

One little drop is all it takes, and it replicates, expands until it fills him, boiling, bubbling beneath his skin, spreading down his neck, into his chest until he's choking. Spreading, out, out, out to his arms. Beyond them, too. Further out and deeper within. Shifting not just in his body but in his being, working it’s way into the fetid smoke that constitutes what’s left of his soul before pulling it apart.

His fingers clench. His jaw locks. His heart thrums as bright lights flash inside his head, and he hears the blood now. Not just boiling, but churning. An ocean of noise.

Behind it all, he hears himself screaming, but only for a moment. The dark is silence, bliss, when it comes.

It doesn’t last. He swims back up from the depths just in time for the second injection, and is overwhelmed by the sweltering heat of it all over again. His insides burn.

* * *

 

When Dean opens his eyes again, he's still chained to a chair, but he’s not in the bunker.

He’s not anywhere he recognizes. Under his fingers, he feels the crackle of power, but when he looks down his hand is curled into itself. Trying to grip a weapon that doesn’t exist.

There’s a pit in his stomach, something rolling and thick, and he knows at once that Abaddon is here. He doesn’t know how. She’s dead. He killed her. Killed her so thoroughly that he’d found traces of her sulphuric blood in his hair that night, her skin under his fingernails the next morning.

She’s stalking through the room, though.

Watching him.

He can't see her, but he knows she’s here. He knows. He can feel the cool radiance of her, and if he listens hard enough he can hear the click of her bootheels as she paces behind him in the dark.

“Never took you for the silent type,” he tells her, turning his head to the side to get a better look around the dank room, hoping she'll answer and give herself away. She doesn't. He's scared. He hasn't been scared for weeks, and the knowledge that he is now makes something crawl inside him. Twitch and tremble.

For what feels like days, she does nothing but move in the very edge of his periphery. She’s eating something. Consuming it. He hears the crunch of her teeth in flesh, in fruit or meat or some unnamed thing, something that should be intangible but isn’t. He smells it, the aroma, and it’s sweet, cloying sweet. Flesh, juices, blood.

His mouth waters against his will. He thinks he might be sick.

By the tenth day he doesn't even care to know what she's eating; just wants to taste it for himself because he's empty.

He's sure he should be dead by now, just from a lack of food and sleep and water and touch, and in a distant part of his mind he's certain that he _is_ ; that this is his new Hell, that she killed him when he went after her with the first blade and now he's back in the pit on a new and improved rack.

Everything that happened after was just a dream. A trick played by his mind in the last moments before death. He never found Metatron, never felt the hot slide of metal pressing into his chest, never became a… but no.

He lets his eyes flick back to black, and knows what he is. The fear goes.

The room looks a little different than before. Murky around the edges, tainted red. He tastes sulphur, remembers all that he's done since Crowley woke him. Remembers the crunch of bone under his fists, remembers savoring the feeling of power and righteous fury that thrummed at his core with every kill. He remembers it and feels it and hates it. Hates it. Craves it. _Hates_ it. The fear is back.

There's water dripping somewhere. He hears the distant _thwip! thwip! thwip!_ a constant rhythm in his head and can't tell any more if its real or imagined. It makes him want to hide. Like maybe it's not water but the echo of all the blood he's spilled. All the damage he's done.

Before he was chained to this chair he remembers beating his fists into his brother's skull, remembers the wet crunch as his nose fractured. Remembers digging his thumb into the meat of Sam's already injured shoulder and relishing the involuntary cry of pain when he found the right nerve.

Remembers being dragged back by hands that stung and burned just touching him, like a low grade electrical current that skittered under his skin.

Remembers laughing in Castiel's face; remembers dealing blow after blow with words— _you think I actually cared about you?_ —and fists alike. He'd enjoyed it. He'd savored it. Had been so lost in the thrill of hurting those who claimed to love him that he'd failed to notice the trap they'd laid, and then he was here. Not here. That was in the bunker, in the basement, but this is—

He looks around and he's in the warehouse. Ahead of him he sees a frosted-glass window and he's sure it wasn't there before. There's light, just barely, seeping through. Murky and dull. Abaddon is still here. This is real. _This_ is real. He's not a demon. He was never a demon. He's too afraid to be a demon.

“Sammy,” he says, “Cas.”

His voice disappears into the dark, and all he hears bouncing back to him is that steady click of heels. Like a clock, ticking down.

When Abaddon finally steps fully into view, she smiles, wide and salacious. Lounges back into a soft chair beneath the frosted-glass window to pick at a bowl of what could either be strawberries or bird hearts. Maybe a combination of both.

She watches him for days, silent and appraising. Her slow smile might be beguiling if it weren't for the sticky red trickle that runs down her chin. She licks her fingers. Eyes him like he’s the next thing on the menu. He wants to ask what she wants, why he's here, but if he opens his mouth he's certain he'll tumble right out of it. He'll feel again, wholly, and that's the last thing he wants.

He grits his teeth together and stares her down. She only smiles wider, uncrossing her legs while she stares right back.

“I had plans for you,” she says finally, sitting forward, and her voice is a honey drip, “do you remember?”

His voice is lost somewhere, trapped out in the dark, and he swallows. Shakes his head. He remembers though. Remembers her telling him how she would peel the tattoo from his chest and use him as her plaything, walk around in his skin and destroy him from the inside out. Maybe that's what happened, he thinks. Maybe she's the demon I feel.

Something in the glint of her dark eyes tells him she knows exactly what he's thinking, and when she rises, stalking across the dusty ground, her movements are sinuous and calculated. As she gets closer the red of his vision flickers and fades. She crawls into his lap, hooking her hands over his shoulders before sliding them back down to his collar, loosening it and trailing her long-nailed fingertips over his throat, tugging until the tattoo on his collarbone is visible.

“But now I wonder,” she says, “if you and I could fit in there together. Make a party of it, hmm?”

She leans ever closer until the demon spills from her lips, snaking out. It skims over his mouth in a caress that sickens him, makes his skin tingle and burn, and he turns his head sharply. His teeth are his only defence while his hands are still tied, and he sinks them into Abaddon's wrist. A hard slap leaves him stinging.

The demon queen is gone.

Sam’s palm is pressed against his forehead, holding him in place, and beside him, Castiel is sinking in the needle. The third needle. He hasn't been under Abaddon's watch. It hasn't been weeks. He's in the bunker. It's only been an hour.

 _This_ is real, he reminds himself, and tries to twist away from the releasing needle, even as a part of him wants to bare his throat, to make the cure come faster.

“You sons of bitches really think you can--”

It's with a strange kind of jerk that it hits him this time, the boiling blood running through him again, and when he opens his eyes the room is empty. Silent. Even the dripping has stopped. It's not the warehouse or the basement but someplace massive and barren, too bright. Too vast. He's exposed, sitting in the middle of the room, and where everything else is stark, clean white, he's filthy. Covered in blood and dirt and viscera.

He takes a breath and there's _nothing._ No sound of moving air, no shift in temperature in his mouth, his nose. No taste, no smell, nothing.

The shackles that had held him to the chair before are gone. He just needs to stand and he'll be free. He can walk out into the light, keep going, he knows, he knows.

Slowly he flexes his fingers, makes a fist, lifts his arm a quarter inch, and it's _terrifying_. He wills himself to move his foot, to press down against the floor and feels his heart seizing with fear.

Shaking, he returns his hand to the armrest and presses his eyes closed and _waits_.

For a long time there's nothing, just quiet, quiet, cold, then all at once the heat slips over him like fog and he's burning on the ceiling in an old house, staring down at himself, and up at himself, and he's his mother, and he's himself at four, and he's a wall of fire, burning, consuming, defiling.

"Dean."

He looks down, behind, up, around until he's one again and his vision snaps back to a single point, straight ahead. Sam. Sam surrounded by frost in the fire in the fire in the--

"Sammy," he says, and his voice comes from someone else, someone just ahead, "I'm dead."

"You're not dead."

"I'm in Hell."

"You're in the bunker."

No, Dean thinks. No.

"I'm dead, and I'm in Hell and I'm dreaming of death."

Sam blinks at him wearily, the sight of him swimming in and out of focus, and Dean laughs. He's pretty sure nothing's funny, but--

"I might as well laugh."

\--or I’ll cry, he thinks. His vision blurs and he's back on the ceiling, the ceiling, the ceiling, the--

"Dean."

Sammy. Dean looks at him in the frost, melting, and he's wrong. He's certain that he's wrong.

"Knew I’d end up back here.”

"Dean, you need to listen to me."

"Oh, I'm listening, little brother. I'm listening. But you've gotta understand I just can't _hear_ anything.”

“You need to try, okay?” Sam says, and he's all in white, in a suit that fits him wrong, his _skin_ fits him wrong, “It’s working, we're curing you, but--”

“You're gonna snap my neck.”

“--I need you to listen to me.”

“I can't even hear my own pulse.”

“Can you hear me, Dean?”

“She was eating bird hearts. You ever eat a bird heart?"

Sam's still talking but the words aren't registering properly, nothing but noise in his head, but in among it all he hears the number four. _Four_ , Sam is saying, and he's turned away from Dean, speaking to someone else, and then there's pain, pain, pain, pain that goes on for what feels like forever, and he says, "Five."

"Six, ah ah ah," Dean's laughing, cackling, his throat raw and bloody. Another needle. Another shot.

His brother's hands are hot on his cheeks, twisting him around to look into his eyes, and Dean blinks against the light that bears down on him, casting Sam into a silhouette.

“Cas, I think he's fighting it now,” Sam says, and Dean grins at him with a face that barely feels like his own. He tastes the blood. Tastes the humanity. Tastes sulfur seeping from him like a fever, sweltering hot.

“This is a waste of time, Sammy,” Dean tells him, and makes his eyes go back to green, makes sure he looks like himself when he speaks, wants to make this stop the only way he knows how, “you're not strong enough. You've _never_ been strong enough.”

“We'll see,” Sam says flatly, and lets go of his face. Steps back, steps away. “Three to go, right Cas?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies from somewhere Dean can't see, and Dean tries to wriggle around in his seat to find him, “three to go.”

"Three what?” he asks, though he's sure he should know, “what's gonna happen when you hit the bottom? What happens at one?"

Dread, dread, death is looming, he's sure of it. It roars through his skin again, burning, burning. Third times the charm. Dread, dread, fear and loathing. He can't die if he's already dead. Dean hears his pulse racing. He hears it, he _hears_ it.

“I can hear you both now,” he says, but his voice echoes around the room and he knows he's alone, “I'm alive. You can stop. Stop now.”

There's a voice in the dark. _Let me die._ It isn't his. _Let me live._ It might be. Maybe it's coming back to him.

"I don't wanna hear what happens at one, okay? Stop now. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. _STOP_."

The binding on his wrists digs in, and he slumps in the chair. He can see Sam again, far away, a tall shadow in the light of the open door, and someones hand is gentle against his forehead. Tingling cool against his fevered skin. He presses into it and sighs.

"Only one more after this,” Castiel says, and Dean can't manage anything in reply but a muffled _please_ as another needle presses in.

* * *

 

He's in and out of the darkness. Red edges and pitch black, bright lights and cold fire. Nothing settles, nothing sticks, and there’s something curling into him, now. Humming soft. Blue light that dips under his skin to sooth the sting of the cure, running over every ache, every pain, every regret, and replacing it with love.

When it touches him he's at the apex of an arc of light, over cloud, over everything, the greet sweeping shape of the horizon spread out before him, and he smells flowers and rain and earth. When it breathes into him he feels the bones of his body stretching out, the spaces where Hell's decay had eaten at him filled anew. Every break repaired. Every hollow filled.

It's too much, the sheer weight of the love bearing down on him, and he doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve it and it's going to be taken away. He pushes against it in the hope that at least if it leaves him on his terms he won't be left quite as empty.

“It's alright, Dean,” the light tells him, but there's no words, just sensation, “just breathe. I'm not going anywhere.”

It's tall, extending up into cloud that Dean doesn't think he should be able to see, and under the pulse of it, leaning down, he can make out the shape of three faces. They should be terrifying. He reaches out to touch them and they shy away.

“Cas?” he asks, and the nearest face moves in the approximation of a smile, “You're glowing.”

“It happens when I'm with you,” Castiel tells him, and his voice sounds like his own again. Rougher and lower and rolling over the worn parts of Dean's soul., and he must be in Dean's head, he must be, because he answers the unspoken question with a smile in his tone. “Only when I'm with you.”

 

* * *

 

The bunker's basement smells like home. Like cold stone and burnt incense and life. There are tears on his cheeks, dried and tacky, and when he feels the touch of a hand on his wrist he blinks his eyes open to see Castiel crouching down beside him. Sam is still standing, tense, by the door, watching with worry as Castiel lifts a silver flask and pours holy water over Dean's arm. It is cool and it leaves him unharmed, and Dean sobs, a loud, broken sound that has Sam's face crumpling where he stands in shadow. Castiel's forehead leans against his arm.

“It worked, it worked,” he can hear Castiel murmuring, and he's crying, Dean realizes. His normally stoic mask slipping away as he lets the feeling spill.

He's unlocking the chains, now, hands trembling as he works, and Dean is terrified. Scared that they're wrong. That somehow the demon is just laying dormant, waiting for freedom.

“ _No_ ,” he says, and the word rips from his throat, “test me again.”

Looking up from where he kneels, Castiel catches his eye.

“Please,” Dean says, and looks from Castiel to Sam, pleading, “ _please_. Just make sure. Make sure it's not temporary. Please.”

“Dean—”

“Please. Wait a day. Just... make sure it sticks.”

Blinking his watery eyes, Castiel nods. He squeezes Dean's wrist before he stands, and his hand is warm.

“I'll be back in a moment.”

He leaves the room, and Sam stares down at Dean with a fear in his eyes that Dean knows his own face reflects.

“I almost killed you,” Dean says.

“I'm fine.”

Sam's face is bruised, swollen. His nose is broken. Dean grits his teeth.

“You're not. Even without what I did—” he nods toward Sam's battered face, “I said some crap, Sammy. And I--”

“Don't tell me you didn't mean it,” Sam tells him.

“I won't,” Dean says, as much as it makes him want to hide, “a lot of it was true. That doesn't make it okay. That doesn't mean you deserved it. Not like that.”

He pauses for a moment.

“I'm messed up,” Dean admits, “have been my whole life. And as much I... as much as I love you, and I do. I really do. I've... resented you. But it's not your fault. It's mine. It's dad's. And I need to work on that.”

“Alright.”

“And I need to trust you to look after yourself,” he adds, “I get that. I just... it's messed up, but when I'm not looking out for you I feel like I'm failing. Like I'm worth nothing.”

He heaves out a breath.

“God, Dad really did a number on me,” he says, and when he laughs it hurts, down to his core.

“We'll figure it out,” Sam tells him, “we'll be okay.”

“Yeah,” Dean tells him, “there's a first time for everything.”

Sam leaves when Castiel returns, carrying a towel, and he crosses the edge of the devils trap to kneel at Dean's side. Dean doesn't say anything as he dampens it with holy water. Doesn't say a word as Castiel cleans his face, his neck, his hands.

He works slowly, methodically, and it feels like benediction.

“Six years and you're still pulling my stupid ass outta the fire,” Dean says, his voice cracking with the effort, and Castiel meets his eyes. He smiles. It makes Dean's chest tight.

“Always,” Castiel tells him, and when he rests his hand on Dean's cheek, Dean turns to press his lips to his palm. It doesn't make up for what he said before. It doesn't make up for what he did. He's going to try, though. As long as it takes, he's going to try.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dean/Cas prize fic for twistedsardonic.


End file.
